by Karina Bashir
The law helps establish legitimacy and inform societal norms—a role that becomes particularly pronounced in the field of psychedelics. Lingering stigma from the War on Drugs, despite the promising scientific potential of psychedelics, hinders the growth of the psychedelic industry and its public acceptance. The public’s trepidation is reflected in a recent survey conducted by the Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics (“BCSP”) in 2023.
By Doron Dorfman
On May 11, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it is lifting its highly contested blood deferral policy for men who have sex with men (MSM, i.e., gay and bisexual men), colloquially known as the blood ban.
While this decision should be applauded as a step toward equality, the policy remains flawed and needlessly stigmatizing, as it excludes potential donors who use pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), an antiviral regimen that prevents HIV infection from sex.
By Xochitl L. Mendez
The coronavirus pandemic changed the world in countless ways, and for a moment it challenged the pre-pandemic separation of — in Hannah Arendt’s terms — the Private and the Public. To Arendt, the Public is defined as the sole realm where a human can live in full, as a person integral and part of a community as an equal. Being human is only fully procurable by the presence that a person achieves when acting among others. Contrastingly, to Arendt the Private is a shadowy space without the sufficient worth to merit “being seen or heard” by others. The Private is also the place where toiling with the endless necessities of providing for one’s body resides.
The COVID-19 pandemic challenged this separation. As many people and their loved ones fell seriously ill, an overwhelming portion of our nation found themselves for the first time living a struggle that previously was familiar mainly to those who suffer from chronic medical conditions. Millions were locked down and marooned at home — a radically novel experience to many, yet one that is sadly commonplace to a considerable number of individuals who live with disability and illness every day. Large portions of the workforce found themselves restricted to working remotely — a reality habitual to individuals who lack access to the workplace. All of these experiences suddenly stopped being private experiences — they became critical concerns discussed by a citizenry of equals, worth “being seen or heard” by others, and demanding policy and political action.
By Brooke Ellison
There is a profound need to deconstruct and actively reconstruct the interpretation of disability as it is currently understood.
The current framing of disability as inability — whether an inability to be employed or otherwise — has utterly failed not only people with disabilities, but also the communities in which they live.
This perception of disability is a relic of attitudinal and policy structures put into place by people who do not live with disability themselves: people who may have been ignorant to the virtues that living with disability engenders.
Current calls for attention to a disability bioethics or a disability epistemology have heralded not only highlighting, but also actively promoting, the qualities, leadership skills, and valuable character traits associated with surviving and thriving in a world fundamentally not set up for one’s own needs.
Before any meaningful movement can be made when it comes to the employment of people with disabilities — whether in the form of workplace accommodations, flexible work settings, recruitment practices, or limitations on earnings — the underlying assumption about the value of their presence in the workforce needs to change.
By Zachary F. Murguía Burton
Can employers foster mentally healthier workplaces via theater?
Here, I discuss a mental health advocacy and inclusivity initiative built around a theatrical production, The Manic Monologues, with a particular focus on pandemic-era efforts to foster awareness, empathy, and connection around mental health challenges.
These efforts aim to promote healthier and more inclusive (and, by extension, more productive) workplaces in the face of the ongoing, escalating global mental health crisis.